Multidimensional poverty measurement of poverty-stricken counties in China's 14 conti-guous destitute areas considering ecological environment

Abstract

As an important part of the national poverty alleviation strategy in China, monitoring of poverty-stricken counties is the precondition and guarantee for implementing national precise poverty reduction strategies. Taking 724 poverty-stricken counties in 14 contiguous destitute areas as the study area, we designed a county-level multidimensional poverty measurement index system that reflected the economic state (poverty appearance), social state (living guarantee ability) and ecological environment state (potential capacity of regional development) in fully consideration of the interdependent relationship between ecological vulnerability and economic poverty, and analyzed the poverty degree, poverty type, causes of poverty and the spatial distribution characteristics in multi-scale and multi-angle levels. The results showed that the distribution of poverty level of different counties represented a geometrically olive-shaped pattern that was larger in lower and moderate impoverished counties and smaller in low and high poverty-stricken counties. As far as the distribution of poverty-stricken counties was concerned, the distribution was spatially heterogeneous, presenting a typical stepped structure that was "west-high vs. east-low", where different levels of dotted poverty kernels were scattered. The multidimensional characteristics of poverty-stricken counties represented a wholely strong spatial dependence; however, both High-High areas and Low-Low areas were distributed intensively while both High-Low areas and Low-High areas were distributed discretely. The characteristics of poverty distribution on both sides of the "Hu Line" were obviously different. The number of seven-factor comprehensive poverty-stricken counties was the most, while the location advantages, terrain conditions and poverty alleviation performance were the significant factors affecting the development of poverty reduction. Ecological poverty caused by deterioration of ecological environment and natural endowments is a regional characteristic in most poverty areas of China.